Dong Hong-Oai| CGauthier.art

Dong Hong-Oai and Symbolism in Photography

(Guangzhou, 1929 — USA, 2004)

This is not a traditional Chinese painting. It's a photographic print. Yet, it's not exactly a photograph. It's a composite photographic creation by world-renowned Chinese artist Dong Hong-Oai.

As an initial reflection, it must be understood that one cannot approach with impunity a culture with 3,000 years of continuous and documented history. The Chinese people have long claimed to have achieved perfection in the art of painting and drawing. Moreover, their long history of non-aggression towards neighboring peoples has forged their social values, while “The Middle Kingdom” provided the entirety of the artistic, philosophical, social and economic creation of the Chinese people.

Using a style known by some as Asian Pictorialism, classical Chinese motifs are framed and layered to create an effect and feeling that a photograph or painting alone cannot provide. This fusion of disciplines is as unique and intriguing as Dong Hong-Oai's life.

Born in 1929 in Guangzhou, Dong Hong-Oai left home at the age of 7 after the sudden death of his parents. The youngest of 24 siblings, he was sent to the Chinese community in Saigon. There, he became an apprentice in a photography studio owned by Chinese immigrants and learned the basics of photography. During this time, he became particularly interested in landscape photography. At 21, after a series of odd jobs, he enrolled at the Vietnam National University of the Arts.

He remained in Vietnam for most of the 1970s war, briefly going to France in 1974 to take up a position with a former teacher who later died, and then to Malaysia to work as a photographer for the Red Cross. Following a series of repressive policies targeting Chinese immigrants, Dong Hong-Oai became one of the millions of "boat people" who left Vietnam in the 1970s and 1980s.

At the age of 50, speaking neither English nor knowing anyone in America, he arrived in San Francisco. He set up a small darkroom and sold his photographs at street fairs. This enabled him to raise enough money to return periodically to China to take surreal landscape photographs and, more importantly, to study under Long Chin-san in Taiwan in 1980.

Long Chin-san, this famous master, was trained in the traditional art of Chinese landscape painting. This art form does not seek to accurately depict nature, but to interpret its emotional impact. The dramatic monochromatic landscapes, using simple brushes and ink, combine different art forms—poetry, calligraphy, and painting—and allow artists to experiment.

During his career, Long Chin-san abandoned his impressionist style of painting to move towards photography. He developed a method of superimposing negatives to place components and subjects at three levels of distance. He taught this method to Dong Hong-Oai.

Seeking to better imitate traditional Chinese style, Dong Hong-Oai added calligraphy and his seal to the images. In the 1990s, his new art, inspired by traditional paintings, began to attract the attention of the art world. Soon, he no longer needed to sell his photographs on the street. Through an agent, his works were sold in galleries and museums in America, Europe, and Asia. He was then in his sixties and, for the first time in his life, he had regained a measure of financial stability.

Dong Hong-Oai died in 2004 at the age of 75. He left behind an incredible body of work inspired by Pictorialism. Dong Hong-Oai was one of the last photographers to work in this style. He is also arguably the best. He was honored by Kodak, Ilford, and Fotokina in West Germany. He was also a member of the International Federation of Photographic Art in Switzerland and the Chinatown Photographic Society in San Francisco.

The influence of Dong Hong-Oai

Master Long Chin-San

Long Chin-san (Lang Jingshan, born in Huai'an, Jiangsu Province, 1892 – Taipei 1995, aged 102) was a pioneering photographer and one of the first Chinese photojournalists. His work is considered the most famous in the history of Chinese art photography.

He became a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society in 1937. In 1980, the Photographic Society of America named him one of the world's top ten photographers. He was the first Chinese photographer to take artistic nude photographs and was also known for a unique technique of "composite photography" that he created.

At the age of 12, while studying at Nanyang Middle School in Shanghai, he received his first training in photography based on the principles of composition and photography techniques.

Career

In 1911, Long began working for the Shanghai Shen Bao newspaper in advertising design. In 1926, he moved to the Eastern Times newspaper as one of China's first photojournalists. In 1928, he became a founding member of the China Photography Association, China's first art photography association, in Shanghai.

Meditation (1928), the oldest Chinese artistic nude photograph

Long's work spans many facets. His work in commercial newspapers made him one of China's first photojournalists, but his work in other fields emphasized artistic values. In 1928, he captured what was considered the earliest surviving Chinese artistic nude photograph, "Meditation" (the model's father beat her when he heard what she had done).

In 1930, he published an album of nude photographs, the first in China. He exhibited his own work, including "After the Tang Masters" at the 1937 Royal Photographic Society exhibition and Majestic Solitude (1937) at the 1940 Royal Photographic Society exhibition.

Long Chin-san briefly experimented with modernist styles, such as architectural photographs that emphasized abstract forms. On the other hand, the texture and composition of Long's landscape photography draws inspiration from traditional Chinese ink landscape painting.

He achieved these effects by superimposing multiple images on a single print using brush and ink. He created several photography groups and organized a series of exhibitions that were also shown in Japan, the United States, and England.

Majestic Solitude (1934), in the style of traditional Chinese ink painting

Style and influences

Long Chin-san is committed to teaching and disseminating his ideas about Chinese photography. He is inspired by the pioneering photographer and poet-writer Liu Bannong, who argued as early as 1928 that China should have its own style rooted in Chinese culture.

In turn, he and his style influenced young photographers such as Liu Xucang and Tchan Fu-li, who were working in Hong Kong. He published an important article entitled “Composite Images and Chinese Art” in the journal of the Royal Photographic Society in February 1942.

Two examples of composite images of Long Chin-San

The influence of Long Chin-San on Dong Hong-Oai's vision

Symbolism before realism

Dong Hong-Oai's photographs were heavily influenced by his time spent under the guidance of photographer Long Chin-San in Taiwan in the early 1980s. Long Chin-San had developed a photographic style based on the tradition of Chinese landscape painting, which emphasized symbolism before realism and was concerned with the artistic interpretation of a scene rather than its faithful representation.

Traditional Chinese landscape painting has more in common with classical poetry than with the documentary-style painting that originated in Europe from the Middle Ages onwards.

The realism of Western paintings was simply not what the Chinese considered artistic expression. They saw it only as a commercial practice, not an artistic creation.

According to Chinese inspiration, artists should not simply reproduce what is in front of them, but

rather, go beyond the scene before them to discover the deeper connections to human experience that it masks.

It is this sensitivity that Long Chin-San, and later Dong Hong-Oai, transposed into their photographic work.

Asian Pictorialism and Long Chin-San

The Asian pictorialist style uses symbolism and composite editing to evoke the photographer's reaction to a scene. The scene is constructed, rather than captured, using traditional motifs such as birds, boats, mountains, and water to convey the artist's vision. The vast tradition of Chinese art and poetry was thus invoked to produce a final photograph that was more allegorical and allusive than a simple faithful image.

This distinction between realism and symbolism is perhaps even more important in photography. The originality of Dong Hong-Oai's work lies in the production of an imaginary scene by giving it a realistic character.

Even more than his mentor Long Chin-San, Dong Hong-Oai's images are faithful to the compositional elements of traditional landscape painting.

Use of space

What stands out in Dong Hong-Oai's images is the use of space and the positioning of elements within the composition. The images of boats and branches, for example, never seem to invade the space. The frame is always filled. It's a minimalist landscape, but perfectly composed.

Long Chin-San and Zhang Daqian: A Century-Old Friendship

Zhang Daqian , the recurring hero of most of Long's works, was one of the most famous painters of the 20th century in the traditional field of ink and water. Like Long Chin-san, though a few years earlier, in the 1920s, Zhang had made a name for himself in Shanghai. The two men developed a strong and lasting friendship

Zhang helped Long forge his photographic language. It was Zhang who introduced him to the Huangshan Mountains: the picturesque peaks of eastern China that have inspired many masters of landscape painting and captivated photographers with their atmospheric beauty. These magnificent mountains would immediately become a lasting source of inspiration for Long Chin-san and inspired his composite photography.

From his first trip to Huangshan, Long Chin-san returned to Shanghai to make some of his first attempts at composite photography. He returned five times, and these peaks continued to feature in his later works. One of his first mountains was photographed during his first trip. It is a composite image from a negative of Zhang Shanzi sitting in front of Qipingsong and other photographic and painted elements.

Lang-Jingshan-Zhang-Shanzi-1932-composite-photograph..jpg

Zhang Daqian's deceased brother, as depicted by Long Chi-San in the Huangshan Mountains.

Thirty years later, in 1962, Zhang Daqian wrote an inscription on this engraving: “My late second brother, Shanzi, visited Huangshan at the age of 51. Mr. Long Chin-San took a photo of him in front of Mount Qipingsong.” Written while Zhang was living in Brazil—and around the same time that Long was making many of Zhang’s portraits. It is a note commemorating a pivotal point in their careers and lives.